Here’s a collection of moments where there was some kind of misunderstanding with communication.
Duplicate work
This scenario has happened a few times in various forms. I don’t get how it can happen when work ultimately comes from the Project Managers.
“we have been pressured to give estimates on the API improvements, but it turns out another team has done 80% of the work”.
Lead tester
Another manager said there was another team involved as well, but didn’t specify in what capacity. So it sounded like a simple project which should have been assigned to 1 team was assigned to 3. Then there was more drama when it seemed the team had been working on it for over 6 months but it shouldn’t have taken that long.
New PC
“It’s over 4 years old (nearly 5). Is it still performing ok or do you want a replacement?”
I was asked if I wanted a new PC, but although I knew others had a better PC, it always seemed a bit of a waste to get rid of a working PC if it wasn’t a significant upgrade. I didn’t know if they had changed the model they were getting in either so I wasn’t sure what was considered “fast performance”. So I was a bit “on the fence” in my reply. I didn’t want to be dishonest and would rather someone decide what the policy was.
It can take a long time to get up and running if I’ve turned it off, and I think building our software can take a few extra minutes compared to some people, but other than that I believe it is fine.
My PC wasn’t new when I started and other people got faster and new PC’s. So maybe I deserve a treat; I don’t want to get left behind if everyone else is getting shiny new PC’s!
But I was surprised that I just got a simple message of acceptance. I suppose it makes his job easier to not order me one.
“I will make a note to ask you again in 6 months.”
Team meetings when you are all at your desks
When we were in the office, we had face to face meetings. As time went on, we seemed more accepting of people that wanted to occasionally work at home. However, when they did, then you needed to dial them in, which wasn’t too bad if you had a meeting room. When we were at our desks, we couldn’t just gather round, we then all had to go on a call.
Me 14:11:
what do you think of Skype meetings when you are all at your desks
Dan 14:11:
they're shit
Me 14:11:
I guess it can be a bit cramped if there's 4 people gathering around 1 monitor
but it still looks a bit inefficient/awkward to me
Dan 14:12:
yeah I don't think people concentrate when they're on skype/teams/whatever
Me 14:13:
I like the one the testers are having
Rob "Alex, can you share your screen"
Alex "what am I showing you?"
Rob "regression testing"
Alex "I never did regression testing"
sounds organised
The Module handover
There was a time where the new idea was that we would hand over most of our domains to the developers in India, and then we move onto newer, exciting projects. I think most of the handovers happened but then we canceled the idea because they decided it was treating the Indians as “second class”.
We have been on this call for 30 minutes for our handover. Someone just asked what the domain is.
Meeting with entire Team but without Vinitha
Although I implied it was a bad idea to assign Indians to a project that was considered inferior, assigning an Indian or two to every team to make them seem integrated also doesn’t really work. When we worked in the office, we had everyone except Vinitha there, so she missed all the ad-hoc meetings we had at our desks, and also all the office banter. The timezone difference doesn’t help either because there’s large parts of the day where she has gone home and we are in the office. There was the occasion where we booked a meeting but then forgot to dial her in. She eventually requested to leave the team. The key thing is to assign projects to co-located teams and not force them to be distributed. But assign the quality projects evenly between the locations.
Online Communications
One day we received an email to our group Development email account.
Someone has logged a comment on the Support Centre "How to activate a portal in local developer’s system or in any of the test environments" and given us this email address to respond to.
This isn't a question we'd be able to answer, we presume someone in Development would be able to answer this/set this up.
Thanks.
Online Communications
Why would someone think the support centre was the correct place to ask that? Even if it was a new starter, surely they would ask a colleague first rather than contacting support.
Everyone to the breakout room!
When we worked in the office, occasionally something exciting/dramatic would happen and we’d be called into a meeting.
To: Group Development
Subject: Please go to the break out room now
Hi all,
Please can everyone go to the break out room now.
Thanks!
Isobel
So with much panic, we all ran in. It was actually for a colleague’s leaving presentation but wasn’t planned in advance. To avoid people panicking further when they see the email, Isobel had to send a clarifying email. On the plus side, there was food:
Apologies for the email sent earlier. It was a leaving presentation for Elliot - nothing to panic about.
There is some food that Maria made for Elliot and colleagues in the upstairs kitchen.
Isobel
Poor communication
When we started working with the Indian developers, we noticed that it seems a cultural thing that they would message you a greeting, then wait until you respond before asking their actual question.
I think a lot of English developers would see a message like “Hi”, then go back to their work until they get the actual message/question… but it never comes. You might just get another “Hi” or “are you free?”, sometimes having to wait until the next morning for the follow-up message.
I made a joke about that scenario:
Previously on Teams:
"Hi"
<episode starts>
"need one help"
<credits roll>
tune in tomorrow to find out what the problem is
It’s incredibly irritating to know that someone needs your help, but you don’t know if you can help, or how long they will need you for. So then it just becomes a distraction.
How about you ask me the questions, and I answer them when I am free?
I could say that I am free, then suddenly not be free if I get a call. So it doesn’t really make sense to delay until there’s a time where you think messages can be sent quickly back and forth. Messaging is asynchronous in nature, just send it and wait.
It seems a common problem, and someone made a website about it:
There was one more frustrating scenario where we had both Slack and Teams. Vignesh asked me a question on Slack. I took a while to answer so he then messaged on Teams. Although it was the distracting statement which gives you no context:
“I need some clarification..when you are free please ping me”
Security Training with 2 days to sign up
I’d imagine organising external training takes a while since they always drag out processes. However, we had 2 days notice to choose a live online session to attend. I think the problem is that the CTO sent an email to his direct reports, then they forwarded it onto theirs and so on. It had to go down 4 levels of hierarchy before it actually got to the software developers who needed to attend. Why doesn’t the CTO just send it to the Group Development mail group?
Some people then didn’t attend so it was probably a waste of money.
Further confusion was that there was a Fundamental Session and an Advanced Session. Were you supposed to attend one then the other? Could you skip one if you think you know the basics?
A shambles as always.
Stranger Coding Tings 